Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Jackals are one of my favorite Mara animals. We recently had an incredible sighting! Two jackals had torn apart a young impala carcass! One jackal had the top half and the other jackal had the bottom half. We were not sure if they killed the impala, but we suspect they did. Here are some pictures!

Keeping an eye on us and her half of the carcass

Another jackal watching

This is hard to crunch!

Look at that red tongue!

It is hard to pick up and carry this! The legs are getting in the way!

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Life in the mara is good! There has been less rain here in Serena Camp, so we have been able to go on evening obs consistently. I’ve spent a lot of time at the dens and other popular hyena hang out spots conducting my scent discrimination trials. In case you have forgotten (I don’t blame ya), I am conducting trials to investigate the type of information being encoded in hyena paste (scent gland secretions). I present hyenas with the scent/paste of 2 alien hyenas they have never met before and record the amount of time they spend sniffing, biting, and rubbing on the stimulus. The paste sample usually comes from an alien adult female and an alien adult immigrant male.

The scent trials are highly entertaining; for example, here is sloth bear loving these sticks:Making a tough choice:

Sloth bear is my most active participant. He never fails to sniff and interact with the sticks at every trial, and he spends the most time at the sticks than any other hyena! His mom spends the entire time following him around (to nurse I presume), but all sloth bear wants to do is be around those sticks! When his mom gets tired of this, she goes towards my sticks, gives them a brief sniff, and then pulls them from the ground; effectively terminating my trial

😅

Sometimes the cubs are not interested in the sticks or are bored by them:

and instead engage in vigorous play, which is very fun to watch:

In my last post, I mentioned how I was having difficulty getting adult participation. There were 2 problems: 1) I was not seeing many adults at the dens, and 2) those that were at the dens, were hesitant to approach the sticks. What I have been doing now, at least with our south clan, is to drive down tracks that hyenas frequent. This has been successful, and I have been getting adults and subadults to sniff the sticks that way. The other good thing about this method is that once one hyena arrives, others follow shortly.

My other project has been to collect fecal samples from antelope and other masai mara mammalian fauna (like elephants, mongoose, warthogs), which usually involves hanging out by a herd, waiting to see if an individual defecates, going towards that area (or what I thought was the area because my distance perception is flawed), and then spend a few minutes searching for the pellets amidst the tall grass! They blend in very well.

Saturday, May 19, 2018

I'm Kate Steinfield, the newest addition to the hyena project. I graduated from MSU back in 2016 with a degree in Zoology and a concentration in animal behavior and neurobiology. I arrived in the Mara at the end of March so I've spent almost two months out here... just enough time to fine-tune my photography skills. And let me tell you, I've had lots of practice! I've seen just about every major tourist attraction; lions, elephants, cheetahs, wildebeest, topi, gazelles, hippos, and of course hyenas. All encounters have been WELL documented with my camera. But boy is it hard to find a leopard! A few days ago, my time to shine finally arrived. A leopard. And not just a leopard, but a leopard RIGHT NEXT TO OUR VEHICLE! This little guy defied the shy stereotype and came straight up to investigate the strange animals sitting in a box on wheels (making for a very successful photo shoot). I'm sure he was thrilled to have his 15 minutes of fame. Enjoy!

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Out here in the Mara, there is a group of animals called the
“Big Five”. This term was originally coined to describe the five animals that
were the most difficult to hunt on foot but since the advent of conservation
awareness the definition has changed. Now it is used as way to see how many of
the five you can spot while on safari, and I’m proud to say that in just two
months I managed to see them all! Here’s a virtual Big Five viewing:

African Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer)

Probably the easiest of the Big Five to check off the list,
these ornery savannah cows are all over our side of the Mara. This buffalo is
doing what buffalo do best, looking mean and judgmental.

African lion (Panthera leo)

Since the grass has recently grown long due to the rainy
season, lots of antelope have been in the area and that also means that there
are lots of lions around. This big male was seen relaxing in the morning sun
and looking majestic.

African elephant (Loxodonta africana)

Elephants are one of best sights to see here and in my
opinion they never get old. Watching a herd slowly make their way across the
plains is so peaceful.

African leopard (Panthera pardus)

Leopards are something you definitely don’t see every day.
I’ve been lucky enough to have two sightings since I arrived, but I am
extremely lucky for having gotten those opportunities. If you do get the chance
to spot one though, it is stunning.

Black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis)

The last on my Big Five list, rhinos are basically never
seen in our territories. One day I had the supreme luck of seeing not one but
three black rhinos all together! Oddly enough one of them didn’t have any ears,
but I’m not about to look a gift rhino in the mouth!

If you ever come to visit the Maasai Mara, keep a look out
for the Big Five! They are by no means all the Mara has to offer in terms of
wildlife spotting, but it is fun to check off the list one by one! With ten
months left here, who knows what else I’ll see?

Monday, May 14, 2018

Few research supplies in camp are used as much as our photo
ID books! We use them daily to confirm IDs of hyenas we see. As they are so
important, it is critical that we keep them updated and as accurate as
possible. It’s a messy and tedious task, but absolutely necessary.

Photos are important: we want to make sure that each hyena
has a clear right and left side so we can easily see their spots. This is
especially important when they are young and growing.

We organize these photos into categories: Unknown is for
small cubs if we haven’t yet learned who their mom is. Cubs is devoted to
hyenas that are still den dependent and their parentage known. When the little
babes graduate (no longer den dependant) we move them to the Subs (sub adult)
category. Male hyenas usually disperse, so they almost never get moved to the
adult male section. Female hyenas, since they remain in their natal clans, are
moved to adults when they are 3 years, or when they have their first cub.

If we have not seen a hyena for 6 months or more, they are
deemed “missing”. They are then given a date last seen, and are moved to our
missing book. We keep photos of missing hyenas in case they come back home.
DEGE is our most recent Missing hyena. He is a male and likely dispersed, but
sometimes males will come home for visits, and its important for us to know who
they are so we have accurate demographic data.

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Before I came to Kenya as an RA in 2014, I thought ants were
cool. They live in these fascinating groups and show an amazing level of
cooperation. Then I met siafu… Other names for these ants include army ants or safari ants. They
live in temporary holes and may move quite frequently. While traveling, they form these long,
distinct lines with the soldier ants on the outside. (Emily mentioned them in
her post last week.)

Long-story short, I met my first siafu in 2014 after we had gotten stuck. I got out of the car,
and in the tall grass, I unknowingly walked through a column of siafu. Within a
few minutes, I was jumping around yelping. The ants had crawled up under my
jeans and were biting me. The soldier ant class has a strong set of pinschers
that they will use to bite and hold. Often times siafu soldier ant bites draw
blood. The ants are also hard to squish, and they will usually bite your finger
as you squish them. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? J

After I had gotten all the ants off me (they were in my
shoes, socks, and all over my legs), everyone then proceeded to tell me siafu
horror stories. Apparently, you can wake up in the middle of the night and
think that you hear rain, but what you are actually hearing are many siafu
falling from the ceiling of your tent. It is raining siafu! Or you might walk
into the kitchen tent at some point and realize that the floor is covered in a
writhing mass of siafu. You don’t want to walk through that! Suffice it to say,
that siafu had quickly become the scariest animal in the Mara!

Since this first experience, I have come across siafu many
times. In the last week or so, they have been all over Serena camp.

As I approached my tent on my way back from breakfast this morning, I saw
the columns… They were all around my tent and under my tarp… But these ants were
a different color than the siafu we usually see. They were reddish. Hmm, were
these another kind of siafu or some other type of ant? Fire ants? Do they bite? I tried to
google them, but there are way too many ant species for me to get an accurate
answer. I ended up asking Philimon and Moses, our camp staff. They called them
termite ants and said that they were harmless. I was okay with letting them be as long as the ants did not cause problems, but of course, Philimon and Moses
went into full on pest control! They sprayed doom, a pesticide, all around the
outside of my tent and put laundry detergent around the edge of the tarp under
my tent. Now, I am stuck outside my tent while the fumes dissipate! Here are
some pictures of the “termite ants” and my tent.

Help Support the Research

You can help support our research by making a donation to the Hyena Research Fund at MSU. Your contributions provide necessary resources for the students and scientists to continue our work. Use the link below to make a donation or contact MSU for additional details.